


Anything for you

by cherrytruck



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Ruby & Sapphire & Emerald | Pokemon Ruby Sapphire Emerald Versions
Genre: Gen, M/M, all the crap on how to get a milotic is here, let's berry blender!, originshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2032794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytruck/pseuds/cherrytruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wallace desperately wants a Milotic, to which Steven agrees to help him out with as a good gesture of their friendship. However, the task is a difficult one and tests Steven's patience as he becomes cynical of his friend's determination for evolving Feebas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oudeteron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oudeteron/gifts).



> Dedicated to oudeteron, who introduced me into this game and made me put up with him fishing for his own Feebas. We both decided to write some fic for this ship and this happens to be my interpretation of it, including all the fishing horrors and weird unexplained mechanism of this odd Pokemon's evolution. (Go check out his version too, it's very good and has smut)

Steven could have sworn they were in the waters of Route 119 for more than two hours by now, yet without any luck in finding this wonder of a fish that Wallace seemed so desperate to catch. He sighed as he gave up on yet another spot with no luck finding the Feebas, adding a cross onto the map of Route 119 that Wallace had given to him. At this point, Steven forgot what land even looked like, being surrounded by nothing but water and Carvanhas splashing everywhere. When he first came here, the water made him feel uncomfortable, but at this point he was so bored to death that drowning himself to become Carvanha food seemed like the more appealing option. He noticed a few trainers and kids passing by, most of them eyeing Wallace and himself in the middle of the lake. They were probably wondering what these two crazy men were doing with their endless fishing. At this point, Steven himself was wondering too. Needing something to break the tedious rhythm, he sailed towards a closer distance towards his partner.

“Wallace,” Steven asked, his throat starting to feel dry despite how wet the rest of his surroundings were. “Why is this fish being so difficult to find? Is it really worth all this trouble?”

“Well, it’s not so different from you and your rare stones now, is it? Why are some stones so rare to catch? I guess it’s a mystery we shall never know,” Wallace replied with a smile on his face.

Steven definitely would have preferred to be in a cave looking out for rare stones. It was quite the thrill for him after all. Disturbing a thousand Carvanhas, however, definitely did not do it for him. “Well, at least stones aren’t constantly moving around. Actually…” It then occurred to him that something about this whole thing puzzled him quite the bit. “Wallace, why are we fishing at particular spots before crossing them out and moving elsewhere? I mean...aren’t fish constantly moving around? Surely we’ll never find your Feebas if we fish like this.”

“Hmm, good question! I never thought about it actually. I guess Feebas only gather around in certain spots and don’t move around very much. Not so different from your stones after all then, huh?”

Steven couldn’t believe his rare stones were being compared to a bunch of strange fish. Not that he was an expert in them to comment, but what kind of fish was this? Was Wallace even sure that this was the way to be catching fish?

“Well, I think I need a break for a bit, otherwise I’m going to go crazy from fishing for so long.” Steven put away his rod, hands already aching too much from all the holding and reeling. “Do you want to rest up for a bit as well?”

“Hmm thanks, but I’ll keep fishing! Oh, wait!” Wallace surfed up right next towards Steven - he only noticed in that moment that Wallace’s clothes were far more dowsed than his own. “Whatever you do, please don’t go changing the popular phase in Dewford Town!”

“Um…” Steven blinked. “May I ask why?”

“Well it’s just, I heard that every time it’s changed, the Feebas seem to change where they are in the river - I mean, I don’t know why, but we shouldn’t really take a chance, otherwise our work today would have been for nothing!”

“Wallace, what on earth…? You know what, nevermind.” He had no idea what that superstition was based on, because surely these Feebases had better things to do than care for what he decided a popular phrase to be. But then again, this Feebas was already proving to be quite the odd Pokemon. Clearly if Wallace was so determined to catch this rare Pokemon to the point of dragging him to come and help out with fishing, he must have been onto something.

~

He would have thought the fact that Wallace caught his Feebas would be enough for him to celebrate, but it seemed that Wallace still had plenty of other tasks in his mind for Steven to help him out with. And so there he was, holding a heavy bucket of water to pour onto the soil each time Wallace planted a berry in its place. Apparently this Feebas had another odd feature which included requiring specific feeding to evolve.

“Thank you so much for helping out!” Wallace had his usual perky smile while he patted the soil flat with his slender hands. “So, I think that’s the last spot in Hoenn that has any free earthy soil to put berries on - except maybe that fabled Mirage Island, if the legends are true!”

“Wait, you mean you already planted berries in every single spot in this entire region that has soil? You can’t be serious!” Steven almost spilled water over Wallace’s hands, but luckily he managed to stop himself soon enough so that only a trickle was able to escape. “You haven’t left even a single spot for other trainers and berry growers to use?”

“Hmm...well, technically the soil isn’t really private property, is it? Though I suppose it also means that these berries could be picked by random ongoers. So that’s where you come in - I’ve got a map of where I have planted all my berries.” Wallace took out yet another map out of his pockets, with more of his annotations. “I want you to cover this half, which means checking them every few hours to make sure they are well-watered. They should be fully grown in the next twelve hours - and when that happens, I want you to grab them as soon as they sprout out, before anyone else has the chance to pick them!”

He had to be joking. It was 3pm right now - could Wallace not have chosen a better time to plant these berries?

“Do you think people will seriously be walking around at 3 o’clock in the morning to be picking up random berries? I don’t think-”

“Steven, please!” Wallace grabbed his shoulders with his hands, probably staining his suit from the residue soil still in his hands. “I worked so hard earning these berries and fishing for my Feebas...believe me, it’ll be worth all the trouble. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Well…” To be honest, he was questioning it a little. But he did promise to help Wallace out on this seemingly impossible quest, simply because he couldn’t turn down a favour from a friend who seemed to passionate about his goals. “Fine, I’ll do it. But you’ll never see me getting into berry gardening, I’m only doing this for you.”

“Oh Steven, you know this means so much to me!” Wallace clasped his hands together as his way of showing gratefulness. “Rest assured, after this, you will never find me berry gardening ever again, and we will never grow berries for the rest of our lives!”

~

Carrying the majority of the harvested berries in a huge bag, Steven made his way to the contest hall at Lilycove City along with Wallace, whose berry load seemed far lighter. He claimed that he didn’t manage to get such a big harvest because other people did indeed steal his berries, and he did mention that he was thankful for Steven being there to be able to rescue the rest of his berries. Still, it was an incredibly tedious job to do, and Steven wished he was in bed right now after not being able to catch enough sleep the previous night.

“All right! Steven, you know how to Berry Blender, right?”

“Wait, we’re blending these berries?” Steven put the bag of heavy berries down to relieve himself from all the weight. “I thought we were going to feed your Feebas the berries so that you could enter it to the contest straight away?”

“No no! I came over here because we need to blend these berries - and properly - so we can feed these Pokeblocks to our lovely Feebas for it to evolve!”

“So Wallace, you’re telling me that this Pokemon, only ever found in its regular generic fish form in the wild, ridiculously rare and seems to have picky fishing spots, can only evolve into this fabled powerful Milotic from being fed man-made food?”

“Gosh well, when you put it that way, it is a bit ridiculous huh?” Wallace laughed as he tossed his berries into the unoccupied blending machine next to them. “But hey, that’s one of the many mysteries of Pokemon that neither of us can answer! Anyway, Berry Blender is pretty easy - you press the button when the arrow points at your spot to make the blender go faster, and the faster it is the smoother the Pokeblocks are, so try and press it exactly at the right time!”

Steven claimed his spot as Wallace closed the blender and then turned on the machine, lighting it up as it prepared to blend. Wallace rubbed his hands together as he looked directly at Steven, eyes gleaming in excitement. “Let’s Berry Blender!”

Steven ignored the fact that what he said didn’t quite make grammatical sense, and tried to pay attention to the blender’s arrow that started spinning around, pressing the button as appropriate when it pointed towards him. It was easy enough at first, but the more they pressed, the faster the blender went, and Steven’s button pressing became increasingly inaccurate. Eventually the blender stopped, and a few Pokeblocks came out, with the machine displaying the results.

“Hmm…” Wallace picked up one of the deep Indigo blue Pokeblocks and examined it, then he looked at the numbers the machine was giving - numbers that Steven had no idea about. “Aah, this won’t do! The feel is too high!”

“The feel?”

“It needs to be as low as possible! We didn’t blend too well - but that’s okay, it was only our first! We still have plenty of berries to try again, right?”

Steven looked at his bag of berries with a hint of misery, wondering how many unfortunate berries they’d have to waste before managing to get the hang of the berry blender. It had better be enough, because there was no way Steven was going to do more berry gardening after this.

They did eventually start to get the hang of using the machine - or Steven was, since Wallace seemed to already be quite the expert on blending. But it concerned him a little when he felt the machine becomingly more and more heated as they kept blending and blending without a break.

That concern later proved to unfortunately be justified, as after they tossed in one of their many berries, the blending machine began to shake and make some strange noises. “Um...Wallace, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be doing this?”

“Oh no! What’s happening?” The machine began to uncontrollably spitting out half-made Pokeblocks that weren’t even the right colour, some of them even landing on Steven’s shoes, before the blender completely stopped and its lights went out. Smoke began coming out of the blender, and it seemed that these two men yet again caught everyone’s attention in an embarrassing situation.

“I think we broke the machine,” Steven said perhaps a little too apathetically. “So what are we going to do now? Are we going to kick out these other people occupying the machines so we can continue our berry operations?”

Wallace fiddled with his berry bag, only to find it was empty. “Seems we’re out of berries! But hey, you know what, I think it’s okay. We have ourselves enough decent Pokeblocks to feed our Feebas!”

“Well that’s a relief.” At least now it meant no more berry gardening or any of this blending nonsense.

“So what are we waiting for, let’s go evolve our Feebas! But first I think we should get out of here, I don’t think that people are happy about you breaking the machine.”

“Me?!” Steven frowned, but before Wallace could respond to that, he had already left the contest hall in a rush.

~

“This is it - the moment of truth! All our sweat and tears have lead up to this very moment - are you ready?!” Wallace took out his Pokeball and summoned out his Feebas, which landed right into Steven’s arms when he tried to catch it before it fell onto the ground. The poor fish looked even less appealing than a Magikarp - something that he wasn’t quite expecting from such a rare hard to find Pokemon.

Wallace took out his Indigo Pokeblocks, feeding them one by one to the Feebas. Apparently those Indigo blocks were meant to raise the Beauty of Pokemon - Steven didn’t know that Pokemon actually evolved through contest statistics that were judged by the general public, but as he began to wonder why, Wallace’s voice of “Ah, the mysteries of Pokemon” echoed in his head, and so he did not bother to ask.

Just as Steven began to wonder if they really didn’t make their Pokeblocks correctly, the Feebas in his arms began to glow - it was evolving! He tried to look over the Feebas to see Wallace’s reaction but its fins, along with the overly bright glow, was getting in the way. Before he knew it though, the Feebas grew into a bigger Pokemon, too heavy for him to carry - he felt himself trip over as the now-evolved Feebas landed on him on the ground.

“Oh my goodness! I did it!! I really did it!” Wallace’s face was barely seen, and he looked like he was about to cry. He ran up to the evolved Feebas which Steven still didn’t even get a proper view of, probably to go and hug it. “My beautiful Milotic! All that trouble of finding you, planting for you, and feeding you - aah, it was so worth it!”

Steven felt like he was about to cry too - but for the totally opposite reasons.

~

For the next following days, Steven found himself spending most of his time inside caves either to train or to find completely random stones, even if they weren’t supposed to be of particular interest - anything to be antisocial seemed to help. Actually, he was purposely trying to avoid any form of social contact for some reason, ignoring all his Pokenav calls and not letting himself being seen at home. Maybe he secretly did want someone to realize he was purposely being withdrawn in these caves - no, he didn’t, he wanted to be completely alone and not talk to anyone after all those Milotic tasks that he was convinced sent him into permanent insanity.

Inevitably he had to eventually go home to get some rest for his Pokemon, if not for himself, so he eventually emerged out of the caves to return home. Unfortunately for him, it seemed that someone was waiting for him outside his doorstep.

“Steven! I-I’m glad you’re ok! Where have you been?! I’ve been trying to contact you and-”

“Just training,” Steven said coldly, not even looking at Wallace as he unlocked the door. He went inside and considered slamming the door shut before Wallace stopped him.

“Hey hey, what’s all this about? Steven, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Steven said with that unusually harsh tone again, playing up his passive-aggressive game quite high up. “Did you want something?”

“Now Steven, I know you well enough to know that there is definitely something wrong when you are talking to me like that, so if something is bothering you then let’s be honest and open about it, ok?”

To be fair, this whole act was a bit daft and he felt bad for Wallace after realizing how silly he was being. But no doubt he was quite exhausted from those tasks, and he felt like Wallace had completely neglected him during and after getting his Milotic. Sure, he did say thank you, but it still bothered him for some reason even he couldn’t point out.

“No, I’m just tired. So please…”

“Well, if you insist. I did want to ask a small favour from you though - just this one last one, if that’s all right?”

Steven puffed out, wondering what more tending his Milotic needed. “What is it?”

“Come outside for a moment, I have something to show you.”

Reluctantly, Steven went back outside, puzzled since there wasn’t really anything interesting to see. As he stepped out, Wallace had a slight smirk on his face.

“Close your eyes! It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?” Steven covered his eyes with his hands, strangely interested to see what Wallace was offering. “All right, I’m not looking.”

He didn’t know what the point of closing his eyes was though, since it was quite obvious that Wallace was taking something out of a Pokeball - probably his Milotic too. He could hear Wallace trying to tell the Pokemon to keep quiet, before making a few more vague sounds which he had to admit he wasn’t sure about.

“All right, you can have a look now!”

Steven looked, and it didn’t surprise him the slightest when he saw that Wallace did indeed take out his Milotic. But before he groaned, he then noticed Wallace holding up a banner with the help of Milotic, along with confetti and stars floating around them. It read out, “Thank you Steven, best Pokemon Trainer!”

"O-oh...um..." Steven didn't want to, but his face let out a shy smile. "Ah, you didn't have to..."

"I wanted to actually throw a party over at mine - I was going to have food and everything for you! But I couldn't get a hold of you and I didn't want you to go through another night without showing you how grateful Milotic and I were for your help!"

"You were planning this and you didn't tell me?!”

“Well Steven, that IS why I kept trying to call you all day, so when you weren’t picking up, I started to worry for you, and all I could do was wait outside here hoping you’d eventually return!”

“...yeah, actually, it's completely my fault," Steven admitted in defeat. "I'm...really sorry, Wallace. I was being immature by purposely avoiding you. I got upset over the idea that you were giving your Pokemon more attention than I - but how could I be so selfish? The bond between people and their Pokemon is what makes us shine as trainers. I failed to see that, and instead I hid myself in caves like an obnoxious Zubat. I didn’t deserve a party after all."

"Oh Steven..." Wallace grabbed Steven's hands with his own, luckily free of soil stains this time. "Don't say that, I was the one who took you for granted! You are right, we must share a close bond with our Pokemon - but that doesn't mean we should forget about our friends either.” He smiled and leaned his head down to barely touch Steven’s. “Oh, by the way, the Pokemon Contest centre wasn't amused by us breaking the berry blender and sent me a letter to pay up, but don't worry. I paid them the full fine so the trouble is off your hands."

Steven felt his mouth wiggle in a funny way as he was suddenly being filled with these emotions - all while Milotic was there in the background still holding the banner Wallace dropped a few moments ago. "Milotic, I'm sorry for not appreciating how happy you made Wallace. You are very lucky to have such a skilled trainer."

The Milotic made a cute sound. The idea that this grand creature started off as a Feebas was still very puzzling, but that was behind them all now.

"Steven..." Wallace's eyes looked intensely towards him. "I want you to surf with me and Milotic...just the three of us, right now, under this beautiful night sky. Will you join me?"

"Wallace, I..." Steven felt his cheeks warm up. He felt tense, but the laugh that followed was as genuine and relaxed as can be. "I'd like that too."

The two trainers then hopped onto Milotic, heading out towards the deep blue ocean, leaving behind the mess that Wallace made right in front of Steven's house, whose door was left unlocked for other random visitors to pop into.


End file.
